Shift Interactive is a partner in Hawkeye Nation, a website devoted to covering Iowa athletics. Shift is responsible for their website, marketing and promotions; and as you can see, they put together a pretty awesome awareness campaign for the site.

For a few afternoons during the week-long bike ride across Iowa, Hawkeye Nation parked the RV in a picturesque area next to cornfields and gravel roads. They joined the Iowa Craft Beer Tent, Brewer Family Farms, and a live DJ, at three of the “party stops” during RAGBRAI. Hawkeye Nation talked to fans about their site and gave out some black and gold swag (for Iowa fans only). The freebies and the 100-port charging station Shift built attracted a ton of riders to the RV.

Our Shifters met people from all over the world: Sweden, Australia, Columbia, and Canada…and plenty from the U.S. too. We scored big when the Maryland Terps fans said they knew what Hawkeye Nation was. That’s so awesome.

A good portion of this campaign was meant to thank the loyal Hawkeye Nation followers. An estimated 90 percent of people knew what Hawkeye Nation was all about; and the other 10 percent were super interested (Looks like we didn’t need an awareness campaign after all!).

This fall, the Hawkeye Nation RV will be doing a similar tour called RVTV with Keith Murphy and WHO TV. The week leading up to the Iowa vs. Iowa State game, the Hawkeye Nation and Cyclone Fanatic RVs will be parked in a different town across the state each day. They’ll be building anticipation for the rivalry, partying with fans and hosting contests. Hawk fans taking on Clone fans might not end well, but it’ll be fun to watch!

When we say fresh, we mean it. Writer Karly Bown is a newly minted graduate of Wartburg College and a new Des Moines resident to boot. (She’s originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, but we won’t hold her Husker loyalty against her.) We love that she’s all about trying new things – new restaurants, new workouts or even a new route home. She also says she “revels in upsetting Type As with her Type B personality.” This all makes perfect sense when you read her favorite quote: “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” Other things to know about Karly: she collects vintage aprons, she likes her tea sweet, and she has actually met Taylor Swift. In fact, she’s already looking forward to T-Swift’s concert #5 in October.

That has unofficially been the PM motto since its foundation in 1999. The day of the annual company picnic played out in typical PM style. Once 4:00 hit, we locked up the office and headed toward Colby Park in Windsor Heights and picked up the spouses, kiddos and significant others along the way.

Some parts of the picnic will never change. The barbeque, brews, and kickball, will remain seasoned veterans. But this year, we brought in the big guns. Face painting, balloon animals and a visit from The Outside Scoop ice cream truck made it an awesome event. Needless to say, it brought out the carefree side in all of us.

With 130 people gathered to celebrate, it was easy to see how much our PM family is growing. We could also tell by the lack of leftovers we had the next day at the office, but that’s one tradition we can handle tossing out the window!

“‘One of our best picnics ever if not the best’ is what I heard from a number of folks — and not just the first timers!” said a happy Kevin Lentz, PM president.

June 12th marked the 57th Annual Art Directors Association of Iowa (ADAI) Exhibition. As an agency that bleeds creativity, we’re super-proud of the fact that we took home some nice hardware this year, including one Best of Category award.

Here’s a look at the award-winning work our creative team churned out:

Excellence Award – Poster Design category – Heartwalk

Excellence Award – Unpublished category – Red Hawk Launch

Excellence Award – Interactive Media category – Honeywell City

Excellence Award – Self Promotion category – PM Holiday Card

Best of Poster Design Category – Heartwalk

Every day, the PM creatives are asked to produce outstanding work against tough deadlines, and they always deliver — albeit with dangerously high levels of caffeine in their bloodstreams. The ADAI exhibition / awards ceremony gives us a chance to showcase a few of the great things they (and other incredibly talented people in the state) do on a daily basis, and we’re proud to both be members of the organization and be recognized by it as well.

Performance Marketing produces turnkey marketing program materials for Indian Motorcycle dealers, and among the programs this year was a refresh of a past Indian Motorcycle program called Honoring Heroes. In the past, the program honored military personnel at the local level. This year, PM ramped it up a bit by also including police and firefighters in the program. Plus, we gave the program a whole new look and delivered a dealer kit that included print, direct mail, email, and web banners.

The new look and refreshed program proved so popular that Indian Motorcycle transitioned the local program into a national campaign. Honoring heroes is something we can all feel good about, and having our work become more visible — and more successful for our client — is something we feel good about, too.

How is it possible that there can be so many talented, intelligent and, let’s be honest, conventionally good-looking people concentrated in one place?

It’s a mystery.

As Granny would say, PM is growing faster than green grass through a goose, and we’re happy to share a little info on even more folks who have just joined the PM family.

Dana Ball, Account Service

An expansive brain can be a real asset in account service, and Dana likes to expand hers by watching documentaries on Netflix. Seriously. While you’re watching Orange Is The New Black, she’s busy learning things. She’s also completed a master gardener program, so don’t hesitate to ask her to include gardening advice on the next status report. She’s happy to help and smart enough to know how.

Staci McDonald, Account Service

While we can’t confirm that Staci has a restaurant chain named after her, we can confirm that she’s pretty darn good at organizing projects. Considering she balances her PM life with a home life that includes a husband, two kids and a high-energy springer spaniel, organization is a handy skill to have. When she’s not busy making sure the PM trains run on time, Staci is either eating popcorn or dreaming of a vacation at a resort with a swim-up bar.

Tori Langenfeld, Operations

Walk into PM and you’ll see Tori’s smiling face. Walk by her monitor and you’ll see spreadsheets and all sorts of numbers that will make you wonder why she’s smiling. But apparently she likes the whole accounting and media numbers thing. Go figure. Of course, she also likes to get away from numbers through her painting (though maybe it’s paint-by-numbers and she’s not telling us) and getting away to the lake whenever possible.

Megan Ratcliff, Account Service

There are two important things you need to know about Megan. First, she is one of the most energetic people we have ever had walk through our doors. Second, she is the only person on our staff who has met Justin Timberlake face to face. Granted, it was the frosted tipped, purple-tinted-sunglass-wearing, Bye-Bye-Bye-singing version of JT of the early 00’s, but still, she met him. When she’s not tearing it up at PM on the Indian account, you can probably find Megan traveling, reading or maybe, just maybe, drinking wine (this is a no-judgement zone, Megan). She’s also a bit of a foodie, which is helpful for the rest of us when we need lunch suggestions.

Stephanie Maxwell, Media Services

Stephanie comes to Performance Marketing from Iowa Public Radio, where she rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful voices in the state (can you introduce us to Charity Nebbe?). Her hobbies include photography and reading, and Stephanie is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa. It’s a good thing too – it was getting a little too Hawkeye-ey in here, lately. She has already put her expertise into some exciting projects here at Performance Marketing, and we’re thrilled to have her as part of the team.

Troy Johnson, Public Relations

When Troy is not testing his tastebuds on the spiciest Asian food he can find, or hanging with his adorable two-year-old son (Jonah), Troy spends his free time consistently getting let down by Chicago sports teams. Before you ask “Why would anyone be a Chicago sports fan?,” Troy has a valid excuse, he’s originally from Illinois, and made his way to the better side of the Mighty Mississippi to attend Loras College. He also happens to be the older brother of our very own Ryan Johnson, and with the combined height of almost 13 feet, the Johnson brothers are looking into starting PM’s first basketball team.

Over the years, we’ve learned that one of the best methods for keeping contractors and distributors up to date on your product line is to, well, actually communicate with them to keep them up to date on your product line. Deckorators thought that was a fine idea, and so we’re proud to launch the initial Deckorators e-newsletter.

Using a template designed by PM, the launch edition was written by our PR team and deployed by Deckorators to their email list. Deckorators will also host the articles within the blog section of their site, increasing the opportunity to reach their contractor base with everything from Deckorators announcements and product spotlights to contractor features and special promotions.

Andrew joins the Shift Interactive family as a web developer. The young and vibrant Schutt graduated from the University of Northern Iowa and the man cannot get enough soccer; all things soccer in fact: playing, coaching, and simply watching his favorite team, Chelsea FC, from the comfort of his couch. Andrew also loves learning new technologies (which is good since he is a web developer after all), as well as running and exercising so he can clear his head to play a little “Magic the Gathering”. A wizard in his own right, his favorite quote is “you shall not pass!” from Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings. We’re pretty sure he uses it all the time to impress his wizard friends. When he’s not using his sorcery, you can find Andrew eating some Blue Bunny chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and belting out Beatles lyrics.

Kristi Christensen

Kristi wears a lot of hats and comes to Shift in a hybrid position of business analyst, quality analyst, and project manager. Kristi is as cheesy as they come (her words, not ours) and she enjoys the finer things in life like Hawkeye…sports and well, the vodka too. Sometimes the two just mix well together depending on if you want to remember the game or not. With a bubbly personality, Kristi’s favorite quote and something she lives by (as we all should!) comes from John Lennon, “When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” Kristi is happy all right, and it is fun having her in the office. If you happen to know country star Luke Bryan, maybe you could help her out. She would love to have a dance off with him, believing full well that he would win. We’re not so convinced though, he has some issues with falling off stages.

C.J. Howard

C.J., the music man, comes to Shift as a software developer and has his undergrad degree from Drake University and graduate degree in Business Development from William Penn University. C.J. has skills that go beyond his job; he is one of the most uniquely talented people in our office when it comes to music. Not only does he love listening to the music of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, Eric Clapton and 90’s hip-hop (he calls it his ‘guilty pleasure’, but everybody has room for a little Biggie Smalls in their lives), but also the man can flat out play instruments. C.J. plays the trumpet, euphonium, flute, guitar, ukulele, and dabbles in piano. He is pretty good at it too, giving private lessons and has performed and toured with various groups over the last decade (no big deal or anything). Unfortunately his touring days are over, but music will always be his passion. He also loves ice hockey, playing video games (fits in nicely with the other Shifters!), and riding his bike. For a man of many tastes and interests, his favorite quote fits him nicely, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Brett Burkhart

Brett joins Shift as the Strategic Director and is pretty darn good when it comes to “Strategery” as famously coined by Saturday Night Live. Brett is all about the simple pleasures that life gives us, which typically involve the morning; his favorite food is two eggs over medium with wheat toast to go along with his dark roast coffee. No cream. No sugar. Just black. The Iowa State grad is rather sophisticated when it comes to his hobbies of reading, writing, and art. His hobbies make sense; he is the “Mona Lisa” of strategic directors (that’s a thing right?). When he is not having discussions on where the business is going and setting goals, Brett is probably listening to Tom Petty or watching the TV-series Sherlock Holmes so he can put together some clues for a fun-filled family game. One day, a VERY long time ago, Brett accidentally lit his little brother on fire. We’ll never know the real motive behind it, but we’re guessing he was setting it up to be some type of Sherlock Holmes investigative mystery. Watson solved THAT case pretty quickly.

Gabe Glynn

Gabe Glynn comes to Shift as the thinker of the group (not to say that we don’t have an abundance of good and deep thoughts going on here regularly), but Gabe is the idea catalyst. Gabe, who coincidentally is not related to Performance Marketing and Shift Interactive partner Matt Glynn, always tries to conquer his fears. For instance, last year Gabe went all Aqua Man and tried to conquer his fear of sharks by going shark fishing last year, at night time, miles from land, in the pitch black darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. He ended up catching a five and a half foot long bull shark. While it was an unforgettable and unique experience… the attempt to kick his Galeophobia or fear of sharks (look you can say you learned a new word today!) failed. In fact, he is now more terrified of sharks than ever. But, Gabe does like eating creatures of the sea, especially in the form of sushi to go along with a nice craft beer. The man simply enjoys life and trying new things (if the whole bull shark thing wasn’t a clue), which make sense as to his favorite quote, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” – Henry David Thoreau

Kayla Knight

Kayla joins Shift as a frontend developer. The Iowa State graduate is a little quiet, but that might be because she was a mime in high school. While mimes are great at entertainment, you probably don’t know any that brew their own beer (real beer, not a beer of illusion), which is a pretty awesome trick if you ask us (and it really beats pretending to be in a box). Kayla is quite the beer connoisseur, so it is not so odd that her favorite drink is craft beer. She also loves any type of food that you can put sour cream on. When she’s not working on websites, you can usually find Kayla hanging out with her cat while watching old reruns of “I love Lucy”. Her love for the show hasn’t changed since she first started watching at four years old. She wishes she could have had the opportunity to meet Lucille Ball, but she’ll settle for seeing her on the TV in black and white.

While we try not to be one of those self-centered agencies that talks about itself all the time, today we’re going to be a self-centered agency that talks about itself because, well, we earned it. We’re proud to say that PM walked away with Best Of Show honors at the recent American Advertising Awards. We also added two Gold awards and Shift Interactive took home a Silver just to balance things out.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on these projects and especially our clients — without you, we wouldn’t be here.

We also want to thank our Media guru, Lori Strum, for her efforts as President of the local chapter of the American Advertising Federation. Along with helping to keep the organization strong, Lori kindly advised us to send a lot of folks to the awards show while honoring her commitment to not tell us if we’d won anything. Well done, Lori. Well done.

Sure, an ordinary marketing agency might have a holiday party. But as an extraordinary marketing agency, PM has a two-part holiday party.

Part One always involves an activity (and adult beverages). This time, our holiday party began at Ricochet in Des Moines, a downtown spot for everything from ping pong to shuffleboard to video games. But mostly ping pong, or table tennis as the snobs like to call it. Our own Nate Adamson is a champion player, so our event included a tournament where the winner — Ryan Johnson — earned the opportunity to get slaughtered by Nate.